Blackstone Brewing Company - Adam Bomb

Pouring a copper-amber color with plenty of beige foam, Adam Bomb offers up a complex array of hop aromas: orange, lemon, and grapefruit citrus, plus herbal, floral, and earthy notes, and a hint of pine. Look for bold hop bitterness to appear on the palate front and center. Bold citrus zest and acidity are augmented by pine, earth, and herbal spice notes. There's also a robust malt core here, delivering caramel tones along with moderate residual sweetness to offer a balancing counterpoint to the hop bitterness. But, despite the strong malt backbone, this IPA lands firmly bitter from start to lingering finish thanks to 83 big IBUs. Big, bold, and round, this brew flirts with Double IPA territory while pummeling our palates—in a very good way—with powerful and deliciously satisfying hop flavors. Delivering more heft and bitterness than our other selections this month, Adam Bomb can be trickier to pair with food. We'd go with well-salted and fattier fare, including ham and various charcuterie. Beers with big hop acidity can cut through fat like a wine. Cheers!

The history of Blackstone Brewing Company begins in 1994 with the opening of Blackstone Restaurant & Brewery on West End Avenue in Nashville, TN. Co-founders Kent Taylor and Stephanie Weins made an excellent, complementary team, with Stephanie managing the restaurant part of the business and Kent handling the brewing operations. Back in 1994, the craft beer renaissance was still in its opening stages, and visitors to the restaurant sometimes walked out when they realized there was no Bud Light on tap. But times change, and ultimately the restaurant became a fixture in the area, serving good food and good beer to Nashville residents and visitors for over two decades.

In 2011, Blackstone made the jump from brewpub to production brewery with the opening of their 15,000 sq. ft. brewhouse on Clifton Avenue. Featuring a German-designed 30-barrel brewing system and a bottling line, Blackstone Brewing Company's new facility gave them the ability to produce beer for retail sale throughout the region. Sadly, Stephanie passed away in 2014, and with restaurant management admittedly not his strong suit, Kent made the decision to close the original restaurant and focus all his attention on the new brewing company and its Taproom. In addition to great beer, visitors to the Taproom can enjoy good food from the "B-Stone Bus," a 1989 Ford school bus converted into a food bus (who needs a food truck when you can have a food bus!). For more info about Blackstone, visit them at blackstonebeer.com.